Many apps missing after upgrade from iPhone 3gs to iPhone 4?

Hi - I'm trying to troubleshoot for my dad who was lucky enough to receive the iphone 4 today. He says the majority of apps didn't transfer from his iphone 3gs. I did a screen share with him and he's right. The apps are on the old iphone 3gs but not showing in his apps library or on the new phone. Anyone else experiencing this? He did a full back-up and had already upgraded his iphone 3gs to the iOS4 software. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I'm missing the messaging app on my screens. I'm able to find it through the search though. This is really annoying since now I have to sit here and wait for OS 4 to download so that I can restore and set up as a new phone

I was told by Apple tech support to do from iTunes File | Transfer Purchases....It seemed to me unnecessary because syncing showed all apps purchased on the phone were in iTunes, but he recommended doing it anyway.

Mine was the same after the initial sync during activation. They all showed in the apps tab of iTunes but were not on the phone. All I did was manually click the sync button in iTunes & after the second sync all my apps were there.

I later noticed none of my Safari bookmarks were on the phone so I hit sync one more time & then they were there.

Not sure why but 3 syncs seems to have brought everything over to the new iPhone.

I also had this same problem. I got my iPhone 4 today and upgraded from 3GS. I normally have about 100 apps. My upgrade went smoothly, no errors. restored from my latest backup of the 3GS. Upon further examination, I was missing about 20+ apps on the iPhone 4. Here is what I had to do to fix the problem.

If you go into your apps in iTunes, you will notice a little question mark next to the names of the apps that are missing. Right click or Control click the app and select get info. It should say that it can't locate the file associated with the app. Then it will ask you to browse to the location of the app file. The app file should be located in the following directory:

<HOME>/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications/

select the correct app file and you should be good to go. This is for MacOS not windows. Windows may be slightly different but you should get the idea anyway.

I have the exact same problem - most of my 3gs apps and the 5 home pages did not sync or transfer to the new iphone 4. How do I transfer both the apps and the apps pages? I'd like them to remain in the same order.

When upgrading from the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4 (initial connection of new phone to iTunes) and AT&T moved my phone number from the 3GS to the 4; the 4 told me to power cycle (and I think unplug). Since a power cycle causes the phone to disconnect & reconnect to iTunes, and since the first sync after plugging the phone in always does a backup, it did a backup of the blank phone settings (no apps), and therefore wiped out the checked apps in the Applications tab of iTunes. (Note: The apps' data did exist, so checking an app, syncing, and then running the app showed the data. Good news: Data's still there. Bad news: Any apps you skip will hold their old data, as opposed to when you delete an app and it removes the app data for you.)

After hitting Erase All Content and Settings on my old 3GS and realizing it only took a minute and not an hour like the original iPhone did running OS 2 or 3, and seeing how smoothly its reinstall went (loaded settings, rebooted phone, and loaded apps OK), and more importantly that iTunes kept the old final 3GS backup and used a new backup for the new iPhone 4, I tried it on the iPhone 4: I hit Settings, General, Reset, Erase All Content and Settings, then connected the phone. It asked which settings to restore, found my old phone backup (used date/timestamp to find right one); it then loaded settings (a few minutes), rebooted, and went right to installing apps. My phone was fine after that - all apps and folders were restored.

apps are not stored in a backup you need to download the applications into the itunes library (you can download apps that you paid for again and not get charged) then sync them over to the phone they have to be in the itunes library in order for this to work at all..

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